Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to continue my remarks. I refer colleagues to the tabled second reading speech from when this bill was introduced. I want to briefly highlight from that contribution that it has been Labor Party policy to actually advance a debt ceiling. It was the earlier incarnation of this coalition government that abolished the debt ceiling altogether. Labor, I note, voted against that repeal, and I appeal to them again to support this bill. Indeed, this Senate has actually passed a motion which said:

… expresses its in-principle support for legislative measures that will help chart a pathway to budget surplus achieved by reducing spending and waste, not by increasing taxes.

They're very simple premises. Government should cut its spending rather than foist its extravagant ways on and become a burden to the taxpayers of Australia.

The Conservatives party maintains a debt clock on its website. It is usually the province of a right-of-centre opposition to maintain a debt clock against the wastefulness, extravagance and inefficiencies of a centre-left government. I regret that now it is up to the Conservatives party to maintain a debt clock against a coalition government, those who are historically very proud of their economic track record. Well, their economic track record, I regret to say, is as bad—or slightly worse or slightly better—than that of those on the other side. There is no difference between the two—the red party and the blue party—except, in this instance, Labor are actually on the record as saying they believe in a debt ceiling such that permission needs to be sought from the parliament before you further jeopardise the economic futures of our children and our grandchildren.

Let's remember how this came about. The abolition of the debt ceiling happened when a coalition government teamed up with the Greens. That Green-blue alliance threw it all out the door and said: 'Trust us. It'll be okay.' I'm telling you that it's not okay. We're $530 billion-plus in the hole. Our government debt clock is ticking away—$488 in additional debt every single second. And there's another $561 every single second in interest on the debt that's already been accumulated. Every single second, the economic future of our children is going down the gurgler.

The total interest on the debt today is around $17 billion. That's $17 billion in interest payments every single year. Imagine what you could do with that. Imagine what you could do with $17 billion. You could build seven brand-new, state-of-the-art public hospitals every single year. Let's have a look at this for a second. You could probably do it a bit more efficiently, but I'm basing it on the fact that, in South Australia, the new Royal Adelaide Hospital cost $2.3 billion to build. So we could build seven of those every single year and deal with a health crisis. But no. Instead we've decided to rack up $530 billion-odd worth of debt to pay $17 billion worth of interest. What have we got to show for it? We've got some sharper pencils and not much else.

Or, if you don't want to build new hospitals but you recognise that there is an electricity crisis that needs to be dealt with, you could tip that money into building eight new 1,000-megawatt, high-efficiency, low-emissions coal-fired power plants. It would cost about $2.2 billion. You could do that every single year. Not only would you provide a fertile environment for our coalmines and our coalminers and their jobs; you would provide every Australian with the lowest cost electricity of almost anywhere in the world.

The tragedy of it is that it's all achievable. It would all be achievable if the last decade of wasteful government expenditure had not existed. Maybe if back in those days when they were throwing money around like confetti under Prime Minister Kevin Rudd—and it hasn't improved much since then—instead of pursuing school halls and installing them in schools that have since closed, pushing pink batts insulation programs or borrowing money to send $900 cheques to dead people and people living overseas there could have been some nation-building project like taking the abundance of water from the north of Australia and building a pipeline or building some dams and they could have drought-proofed sections of this country. They could have improved the prospects and they wouldn't be facing the crisis they are facing in New South Wales today. All of those things may have been possible. But no. Instead government chose the expediency of clocking up bills they knew they would never be asked to repay.

I think that is the greatest moral challenge of our time. How can we, today, expect to sustain and prop up our lifestyles and the grotesque spending from an engorged government that is delivering worse outcomes for the people of Australia whilst indebting future generations?

And it's compounding the problem by this immigration Ponzi scheme, where we go, 'Oh, my goodness. We've got an ageing population. We've got these debts. What are we going to do? Let's truck a whole bunch of people in here and keep the whole merry-go-round going.'

It's time to take stock. It's time to take some accountability. I note that the conservatives have said, 'We need to clean up Canberra,' and that our proposal is to suspend or freeze pay increases for politicians and senior public servants. Until they can deliver the promises they say they will, in respect to surpluses, until they're held to account for that, the promises will go unheeded. We've heard this from the greatest Treasurer in the world—apparently—Mr Wayne Swan, who said a surplus was just around the corner. Mr Bowen said much the same thing. Mr Hockey said much the same thing, and so on and on and on we go. One coalition frontbencher said, 'Imagine, under the current trajectory, if we run a $7 billion surplus every single year for the next 100 years, maybe, just maybe, we'll be able to pay off the debt that's already planned.' It's an extraordinary and shameful indictment on everyone in this place who keeps voting to borrow money to throw at problems where money is not the issue. It is the effectiveness of programs.

I want to reflect on one of those things that happened in this place. It was in respect to the education funding bill. Education funding hasn't been working for the Australian people, because the literacy and numeracy rates of our students have been declining. The more money that's thrown at it, the worse it gets. We've got university students who are getting into teaching degrees with ATARs of 17, the minister said on television yesterday. And more money is being thrown into these less productive and respected outcomes than ever before. The government put forward a bill for $18½ billion to be thrown into education, most of which was not accounted for in the future estimates, so it's just another promise—$18 billion. When asked, 'What are the accountability measures that will come out of it? What will be the outcomes? How will they be measured?' the answer was, 'We'll get to that in a short time.'

The indictment is not just on the Labor opposition and the coalition government. It goes to the crossbench as well. The crossbench all want their pound of flesh and to, somehow, stamp their authority over the government. Their desire was not for increased accountability or transparency; it was to borrow another $5 billion—$5 billion, as if it was just money to buy some fish and chips—to add to the unaccountable and unfunded $18 billion promise from the government. So I look around this chamber and go, 'Where are the voices of prudence, of common sense, of fiscal responsibility?' They seem to have been abandoned. And it's to the detriment of our country. Right around the world, we see governments doing the same thing.

I hear justification from many in the government sphere or the opposition that Australia is somehow winning last place in the ugly fiscal contest. That's not good enough. We don't want to be in the ugly fiscal contest. We want to be in the beautiful fiscal contest—the country which runs surpluses, which doesn't have national debt, where our government is an ally of the people and the next generation is the custodian of all that makes this country great, rather than the enemy and the opponent of our children and our grandchildren. They—and, ipso facto, all of us—are doing the next generation a massive disservice. It is a disservice because we are not prepared to live within our means today, and we're expecting the next generation and the one after that and the one after that to pay our bills.

This has been noted by very many people who can remove themselves from the demands or pressures of political life. It seems something happens in this place when you come up here and go, 'It seems like a good idea,' in this building, even though it doesn't pass the common-sense test. If you go out to the Australian people and ask them, 'Do you really think it's wise for a government to give $440-odd billion to an organisation without a strong track record of success, without a tender process and without anyone really understanding how and why that came about?' most people who live in the real world say, 'No, that's not clever at all.' And yet we've got the cabinet and the government saying that they can do that with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation. They're still a little coy about it all, but it's $440-odd million that has been borrowed. Wouldn't it be better to put that money into repaying debt? What about the fact that the government can give $440-odd million to a foundation with half-a-dozen employees, with little scrutiny and with very little justification, and yet it has successfully ignored the plight of farmers for many, many years?

Some in this place—one of them was former senator Bill Heffernan—have talked about the damages and dangers of drought in New South Wales for a very long time. And yet, because it wasn't a crisis, it went unheeded. Now, when it is a crisis and when things could have been done earlier in the piece, the government throws $190 million into drought relief. That's $443 million, or $444 million, in a non-tender process to, really, an unknown group, versus $190 million in crisis drought relief.

On the front page of The Australian today it states there is $22.5 billion in pork-barrelling in electorates. That's only what The Australian has dug up. It's on both sides of politics. Should the government really be tipping borrowed money into building mini golf courses to satisfy Labor's Waste Watch spokesman? I mean, if he was truly a former Waste Watch spokesman, he should have said, 'We don't want to waste the money on a mini golf course. Let that be done by the private sector.'

What about a second-hand ute with a Santa sleigh on the back? That's a questionable use of taxpayers' money as well. At least Mr Kevin Rudd got a ute from his mate and it didn't cost the taxpayers any money. Couldn't we have done that again? What about dog parks? Is it really within the purview of this federal parliament to be funding dog parks? What about the cat lovers of the world? I love the dog parks, but it's not the responsibility of the federal government to be doing it. Leave it to the local councils. Leave it to state governments, if that's all they want to do. What about an extension of a model railway, or a children's water frog slide? We are getting into the inane here. We are here to be custodians of the children's responsibility for the future and we're building them water slides. It's akin to Marie Antoinette saying, 'Let them eat cake'—'What do we care? Let's entertain them. Let's put some bread and circuses there so that we can distract them with their water slides whilst we're selling out their futures.' Well, it's time to have that change.

We've got $500-plus billion in debt. There is no genuine or credible plan to repay this money. We have been using this money to prop up the egos of politicians, to prop up public servants, for pork-barrelling in marginal electorates and to prop up experimental political schemes that have failed. But, as justification for their failure, they use: 'There's not enough money being tipped into it.' It's not that at all. There's plenty of money. It's just that it has got to be applied in a prudent and responsible manner. In fact, you can make the case that you can achieve more by having government do less. Part of coming up to Canberra after a long winter break is the frustration of knowing the damage that is going to be done in this place as the boondoggles and the lack of accountability and responsibility continue to be advanced. We're seeing it. There is rewarding of political mates. We're seeing it where everyone wants a plaque to say, 'This is what I've achieved.' Why don't we have an honour board for those who are actually interested in getting our country back in the black, back on the right track: re-adopting the process of running surpluses and not throwing money at every demanding cause and every sob story? The sob stories will only get worse and only get bigger in the decades ahead, because we are on an unsustainable path. If we cannot sustain our financial and economic sustainability—or profitability—if we cannot sustain our way of life in this country, and if we cannot sustain the quality, the values and the principles upon which this country was built, then we might as well all give up.

You've got to ask yourself what you are doing here. If our commitment is to the 'now' generation, to the 'me' generation, with no thought to the future or to our responsibilities—which are to not lumber our children and our grandchildren, and possibly their children and grandchildren too, with paying back our failures today—then we have failed. And, unfortunately, I regret to say, we are failing. We're failing them because there is a lack of will and a lack of commitment—and it is, as I pointed out, from both the major parties. They'll pay lip service to it, but they don't like it. They'll pay lip service to saying, 'We're going to do this,' and, 'We're going to cut spending. We're going to make government more efficient. We're going to target our money in a more effective manner.' And yet their actions undermine those very claims.

That's why Australians are casting their eyes around the place. They're looking for alternatives—some of those alternatives are healthier than others, I will say—because they no longer believe what politicians are going to tell them. They no longer believe that what we're doing up here is acting in their interests; they think it's acting in our interests. And, unfortunately, I think they're right: political expediency is the order of the day. But we've got to change that. We've got to make the order of the day our responsibility to those that will come after us. And the greatest thing we can do is to prevent them from having to pay our debts of today. That is the great moral challenge of our time, and every member in this place needs to put their hand up and say they are committed to doing it. One way in which you can do that is to invoke a debt ceiling so that there is not a blank cheque for government, because you know that, when there is a blank cheque for government, they just keep adding zeros and zeros and zeros to the cheques that they write.